I’m unplugging this evening until the 29th of May and heading on a dream vacation with Eileen (but not poor Nixon, who will be despondent at our absence) to French Polynesia in the South Pacific. Specifically, the island of Tikehau (with a whopping 400 people on it and not a single car) in the Tuamotu Archipelago and then Bora Bora in the Society Islands. I am heartened to note that Tikehau is far enough off the beaten path to lack an entry in Wikipedia, though oddly its airport has a one-line entry. Bora Bora is also in the middle of nowhere but is a major south seas tourist destination (for good reason…that’s a picture of Bora Bora below). I plan on spending the 11 days scuba diving, snorkeling, windsurfing and reading, and generally staying as far away from the internet as possible.

One of the reasons I’m quite excited to go is that, worldwide, coral is dying off at an alarming pace due to a variety of factors (all likely caused by man) from global warming to pollution in the oceans. A few years ago a comprehensive study of coral in the Caribbean was released showing that about 80% of the Caribbean’s coral had died off in the last three decades, for instance. Last time I was in that part of the world (on St. Martin/St. Maarten) I saw huge regions of dead coral when diving and snorkeling. The South Pacific has managed to stay relatively untouched by these phenomena at this point, though Tikehau is likely to be wiped off the face of the earth within 100 years by rising oceans (unlike Bora Bora below, Tikehau is very flat and very susceptible to rising waters).
Bora Bora